John Wade, “The Aristocracy and the Oligarchy” (1835)

Abstract

Land ownership was not the only way the ruling elite in Britain earned income at the expense of ordinary people. There was a veritable “System” of highly paid government jobs, sinecures, pensions, and patronage for their friends and families which satisfied the needs of a “menagerie” of “tax-eaters, public cormorants, and vultures” which fed at the public trough. He documents the salaries of the thousands of “placemen” who work collecting taxes and for the monopoly post office. He particularly dislikes the custom of “pluralities” whereby some people have more than one government job; those who earn more than 1,000 pounds per annum; and the lawyers whom he says, of all those who prey on the community, need to be “the most narrowly watched.”